Found this link while reading the comments on an article on Ars Technica.

The type of complaints about 7 is almost identical to the current ones about 8.

Summary: My colleague Jason Perlow has been playing with Windows 7, and he hates it. The sad thing is, all the things that he hates are improvements, in my opinion, which just goes to show that you really can’t please everyone. Jason describes a reaction I heard from plenty of diehard XP users when Vista was released. If you insist on using techniques you learned back in the last millennium, you will be frustrated. But I believe that an open-minded XP user who actually takes a few minutes to learn how the new UI works will be more productive very quickly with Windows 7. I've taken Jason's three examples to prove my point.

I loved both, Windows XP and Windows 7.
Back before Win 7 RTMd I had a dual boot set up on a netbook with XP and 7. Win 7 absolutely flew on it, with everything enabled, even better than XP itself.
Although there really wasn't much difference between the 2, as in Win 7 didn't take any time getting used to at all, I did miss the eye candy of Win XP for awhile, but transparency in Win 7 is nice too.
If I didn't lose my own XP visual styles I made, I'd probably have come up with some mods to it to run on Windows 7, but more of a cross between bot XP and 7 in looks.

XP was great in its time, and if a computer's hardware couldn't support Windows 7 or even Vista I would use XP on it in a heartbeat.

Though I have a problem with people claiming anything is more productive if you learn it, if something isnt intuitive to someone
even if they learn how to use it, they wont be as productive as they were, there is no one size fits all for that kind of thing.

I've not really used Windows 7 so I can't comment fully, but I have found in the past that when I've tried to find a simple option, Microsoft have moved it somewhere that doesn't make sense in my mind. Sure enough, I had the same problem when I tried Windows 8. Now of course if I started using either as my primary OS I would come to learn where everything is eventually, but that won't stop my brain from saying, "Where's that option gone? Oh, there it is. Why would they put it there?"

To be fair, Perlow is a power user to the core. Most of his complaints in this article are him falling out of relevance.

* Microsoft has now completely removed the ability to have a "Classic" Start Menu.- Should have been killed off in XP, IMO.

* The Run option no longer up by default.- Simple, press Start, type CMD, press 'Enter'. The Windows 7 search bar makes Run obsolete. Microsoft should have removed it, IMO.

* Another thing that greatly frustrated me was the fact that a fresh install of Windows 7 gives the end-user a blank slate on the Desktop, removing the familiar "Computer", "Network", "Control Panel" and "My Documents" icons, requiring users to get to those functions and folders via the Start Menu .- So? Right click on the desktop, select Personalization, and put the icons back up. Not hard to do.

* As a general theme, Microsoft seems to have made changes for the sake of change, which was the case with Vista and is even more apparent with Windows 7, once you start digging into the OS dialogs and UI in depth.- How is redesigning ancient dialogs a bad thing? DO you really want old, Windows 95/98/2000 dialogs popping up? Ugly!

* I also find the Windows 7 Control Panel to be less intuitive than XP's -- they've tried to simplify things, but in doing so, actually made it more frustrating, because you now need one additional mouse click to see all the Control Panel options -- of which there are now approximately double than which existed in XP.- Search, buddy. Use it. Press Start, type what you're looking for.

See, like I said, Perlow is a power user to the max. Windows isn't Linux. It's a consumer grade OS that needs to compete with users of all types. If you really want a geeky OS geared toward the power user, Linux is your best bet.

Even though I am a up and coming system admin, I love the changes made to Windows since XP. I hate complexity, and Windows 7, and now Windows 8 have removed a ton of that crap that riddled XP. Now if only Cisco could wake up and realize it's not 1970 anymore...

EDIT: The top comment on Ed Bott's article makes me ROFL.

Loving Windows XP

I don't understand what would be so difficult in giving users a chance to select "Use XP Interface" for those who don't relish leaning new commands for things they already know.

Sure, why doesn't Microsoft just add back in every option Windows has ever had over the years? Don't be mad when a default install size then reaches over 50+ GB's... Id' also hate to see what kind of support would be needed for an OS that still has all that code in it.

Even though I am a up and coming system admin, I love the changes made to Windows since XP. I hate complexity, and Windows 7, and now Windows 8 have removed a ton of that crap that riddled XP. Now if only Cisco could wake up and realize it's not 1970 anymore...

Personally, I've said this before and got ridiculed, so I'll say it again, with a few changes... 8 isn't for everyone, but neither was 7, if you like 7, stick to it, if you like 8, great, for those worried about updates, one can assume, because of how much microsoft extended support for xp, there (in theory) is no reason why microsoft shouldn't keep up support for 7.

To be fair, Perlow is a power user to the core. Most of his complaints in this article are him falling out of relevance.

* The Run option no longer up by default.- Simple, press Start, type CMD, press 'Enter'. The Windows 7 search bar makes Run obsolete. Microsoft should have removed it, IMO.

* Another thing that greatly frustrated me was the fact that a fresh install of Windows 7 gives the end-user a blank slate on the Desktop, removing the familiar "Computer", "Network", "Control Panel" and "My Documents" icons, requiring users to get to those functions and folders via the Start Menu .- So? Right click on the desktop, select Personalization, and put the icons back up. Not hard to do.

Funny - because these things were removed in Vista, not 7.

The Run box - clearly NOT a power user, as WIN+R brings it up and has always done that since Windows 95.

The article was done around the time of the launch of Windows 7. The reason for bringing it up is to highlight the fact that some people (especially "tech" people) had the same kinds of reservations about Windows 7 as they do about Windows 8.